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SEE IT: NATE BERKUS MAKES OVER MY BATHROOM – WHAT DO YOU THINK?!

Re-publication of last week’s Coaster and TheBPlot article but with the link to “before” and “after” images…

Five months ago I sent an email to the new daytime talk show, The Nate Berkus Show, hosted by the handsome interior designer discovered a decade ago by Oprah Winfrey.

Photo courtesy Harpo Studios

My note detailed the “blah beige decorating world” I live in because of my color vision deficiency (that’s color blind to you and me). I explained that I have family and friends I call “colorists” who help me pick out anything that has to do with color – for the house or my wardrobe – but I needed bigger resources to help with a few pressing decorating issues.

Since Nate is big time into repurposing and vintage style, I also invited him to do a tour of Asbury Park’s fab antique and thrift stores and included photos of some of the furniture “finds” I have made over the past few years.

I heard nothing but crickets from the show for months and then, out of the blue, an adorable producer reached out to me for even more photos and more info about me and the house.

After a feverish few days, it was decided Nate would take on my second floor bathroom design dilemma.

I wanted the bathroom – the first room I see every morning – to get an infusion of color, texture… energy! I liked my “Saratoga Springs” blue painted walls with white moldings but wanted more oomph, so I took a ride into New York City to “make some television.”

The hour-long show featured two segments answering the question “How do you pick the best blue jeans for your body?”, a health segment about cures for the blues, another style segment about finding the right color blue for you and my blue design dilemma segment with Nate.

My segment got off to a tough start. The producers kept telling me to amp up my energy. I started the segment by telling Nate that there was no way he could have ‘ugly jeans’ like he said he did in the segment prior. He is too perfect. I am concerned I came off like a bumbling idiot. Ug.

“I picked the color to work with the veins in the classic Carrera marble you already have in the bathroom,” Nate explained to me as I shook his hand – the same hand that has shaken Oprah’s.

I was pleased. Nate’s ideas were simple but nothing I would have ever thought of – mixing a twist of modern from the store West Elm into my 1923 Craftsman-style bathroom. And all the fabrics were organic.

But it was actually difficult to focus on his solution. Sitting next to Nate – as I imagined how perfectly designed our life could be together – I was captivated with his even-better-in-person looks. His hair is like a grand, voluminous and billowy pile of fine brown silk falling strategically onto his two-day old scruffed face, seemingly pointing to his bluer than blue eyes. He might be a pinch shorter than me too, but you didn’t hear that from me.

After the cameras turned off, Nate was equally as wonderful. He is unaffected (huge for any designer) and genuinely seems to care whether the guests like the makeovers he does, asking me twice if I was “really happy with the way it turned out?”

Thanks to the newest unofficial member of my colorist team, my mornings are more vivid and my design dilemma is history.

He can do the same for you. A producer wants to hear from you: email the totally sweet Amanda five sentences about your dilemma and some photos of you at ARocco@TheNateShow.com. If you need help, email me!